The hazy issue of weed and work
bbc.com
bbc.com
Too bad I live in a state that doesn't recognize the medical benefit yet, so I forgoe for legal reasons, but some of my buddies in the same state are literally risking jail and worse just to use their medicine.
Its not an employers business whatsoever unless relevant to the particular job. Also, people need yo stop signing employee agreements and whatever paper HR shoves in their face. Last place I was at I signed one document, and just threw away the drug testing paper. Without those papers signed many employees have no recourse on the subject at all anyway. Of course, many people are so far entangled in one form or another they let their employee walk all over them. People ought to be more willing to walk out the door in at will states, and need to be more specific about trigger conditions in contract work.
But, man, am I tired of smelling it everywhere. If cannabis users are going to be so inconsiderate about stinking up common spaces, it's going to be difficult to support legalizing it for recreational use.
Only uneducated idiots actually smoke the stuff anymore. There are so much better delivery mechanisms nowadays which are much less harsh on your throat and lungs, it's not even funny.
Source: I used to live in Denver, and I knew a lot of friends and co-workers who used vaporizers and never had a problem with smell.
It took me years to figure out that was causing me to feel so awful. I spent my younger years getting sick in school, in church, in shopping malls and when visiting relatives.
I've gotten good at avoiding it now, but I don't whine and complain about it to everyone who uses that stuff. I just remove myself from their presence.
I've also noticed that many of those who complain the loudest about the smell of herb or tobacco are those that reek the most of those nasty toxic perfumes so if you've drenched yourself in that crap before you walk by me and decide to complain about herb smoke be prepared to have me unload on your toxic smelly self because I will not hesitate.
They don't tell who exactly expects that, nor what the chances are such expectation will hold true (nor whether it will in the long run, over the course of decades). At first sight it makes sense, but does it really? I couldn't find any large scale studies, but searching the internet seems to indicate the outcome can go both ways. There's enough articles to be found saying there's actually a decline in use after legalization (e.g. in Portugal and California). Likewise for the opposite. Conclusion to me: you can expect what you want, but without a proper scientific approach to evaluating it you just don't know for sure.
I'm no expert but I feel that use is indeed on the rise.
Volumes have been increasing in WA since 2014 but seem to be near a plateau from my point of view.
Edibles, oils and pre-rolled make the product much more accessible and anecdotally I see more folks, even in BigCo comfortable talking about and even using reefer
What if an employee is under the influence of marijuana? Well gosh, if your employee constantly comes to work drunk, you probably fire them. The article tries to point out that it's harder to test for cannabis intoxication than alcohol intoxication, but few businesses are going to administer a test anyways. They will just fire you if you are inebriated. So why would it be any different? The question is never posed.
And then, the assumption that randomly drug testing employees is somehow normal or OK pops up, with some hand waving about how some companies are shirking their presumed responsibility towards this. In a lot of countries, you're not even allowed to do employee drug testing unless the work is dangerous. I wonder how they are coping?
The article tries to paint a picture of some big complicated problem, but it smells like bullshit to me. HR departments already have ways of dealing with these problems, and the legalization of the substance has little to nothing to do with it.
Quick googling does not turn up numbers. Do you have a concrete basis for your conjecture?
http://content.time.com/time/health/article/0,8599,1893946,0...
Compared to the European Union and the U.S., Portugal's drug use numbers are impressive. Following decriminalization, Portugal had the lowest rate of lifetime marijuana use in people over 15 in the E.U.: 10%. The most comparable figure in America is in people over 12: 39.8%. Proportionally, more Americans have used cocaine than Portuguese have used marijuana.
And http://norml.org/aboutmarijuana/item/marijuana-decriminaliza... has a whole (obviously cherry-picked) list of studies supporting the claim, though most links are dead.
"It has been demonstrated that the more or less free sale of [marijuana] for personal use in the Netherlands has not given rise to levels of use significantly higher than in countries which pursue a highly repressive policy."
etc.
I worked at a call center. We had an hour for lunch. I had it timed down to a science. I could drive home, even in severe winter conditions, get up to my apartment, and queue up an episode of American Dad on Netflix. I had exactly the amount of run time of that episode at home for lunch, and I would smoke at least two bowls from my water pipe. If the morning had been especially hectic with angry customers, I'd hit it harder.
I'd walk back in to work with 10 minutes to spare. Sit down, catch up on emails I'd seen but ignored in the morning, and get situated back at my desk. Because it was a call center, and it was better to be 10 minutes early back from my lunch instead of 30 seconds late. I would then field my best calls of the day, and my metrics would prove this. I got the best response rates, the best feedbacks, and generally just felt the best about those calls. There was no anxiety, just two people on a phone call, and getting some tech support.
Was I driving while impaired on the way back to work? Yeah, and that shit is bad news, I'm not defending that. But given the stress and rigors of the call center, it's what I did to cope. This was before I took my mental illness seriously as an illness, and sought professional help with a doctor. Just me self medicating at home on my lunch break. But the raw data of my performance numbers don't lie, when I was blazed out of my fucking head, I was the best man or woman on the floor, period.
My manager loved me. But she didn't know every time we'd have our monthly face-to-face performance meetings, I was blazed out of my head then too. Why? She always booked them after my lunch break. My actual goal in those meetings was to see how much of her time I could waste, because they were only scheduled for a half an hour, and they want you on the phones producing all the rest of your metrics non-stop. But if I could get her talking and keep talking about work stuff, that meant more time I wasn't sitting under the barrel of the phones.
I don't know that I have a point to any of this. Just anecdotal evidence to throw on the pile from my own personal experience. But I only feel compelled to bring it up because that job was such a numbers and performance driven affair, and my data backs me up on this. I had actual proof in the numbers, beyond just the assumption that I was doing better because I felt better because I was high.
They were strict when I first came to help them about not smoking and driving, which I of course respected.
However once Grandma was smoking daily she realized its really a non-issue. Even for her. She's 66 btw.
As long as you have a tolerance. That is the key here.
If you do not:
then you shouldn't drive until you have a shower, some snacks and a light nap.
I know about tolerance. From my personal experience I actually very much enjoy actively smoking a blunt while I'm driving down the highway or interstate. But it's still impairment. I am still not of my regular faculties while driving. Even if my regular faculties are wrecked with anxiety and more likely to get me in to an accident. Regardless, if, for whatever reason, anything should so happen and I wreck, it automatically becomes my fault. No ifs ands or buts about it in the face of the current law. And I can't readily defend against that, I think that's the right call.
Fair point on the law.
However, in the world of software, I'd never even consider applying to a company that bans drug use. It's none of their business what I do after work and there's practically no liability at stake for a large majority of the work that I do. I'd be insulted if asked to take a test, and I'd quit on the spot.
They're all subject to random drug tests, under the same policy as the train drivers. I think it's done to be fair to all staff, whether their current work is in a potentially dangerous position or not.
I ask because a high CBD strain may be better for you, it's very relaxing without many of the other psychological effects, and typically the strains have very little/next to no THC.
But I guess the possibility of a test failure would still be lurking.... there are also pure CBD capsules and tinctures. Just a thought.
Its a straight up escort you out of the building firing offense with your appeal being a blood test at the local clinic. Showing up to work drunk is also a firing offense for comparison.
It just depends on where you work, and people need to understand what situation they are in.
Alcohol? Since it's typically just a urine test, you can expect the traces to be gone within hours. If they're doing a liver enzymes test, they can detect alcoholism or heavy alcohol use in a wider window, but it still doesn't compare to the time weed stays in you.
Further, alcohol abuse can generally be explained away because it's accepted by society. As long as you're not obviously drunk when talking with them about it, you can get a pass. Weed is the devil's herb, cause of all manner of calamity and reefer-madness, don't'cha'kno. There's no explaining testing positive for marijuana away.
How the fuck else are you supposed to make games about slaying dragons and defending extra-terrestrial Earth colonies from fungal-based zombie invasions? Somebody's gotta be high to come up with that somewhere in the development pipeline.
I know -- KNOW -- whoever worked on the Environment Art for that scene has done mushrooms, LSD, or both. Because that's the only way you truly know what that sensation looks like, IMHO. And the way they were able to capture it in 3D animation was spectacular. Big Hero 6 is just Pixar showing off art ability, if you ask me, since it was a licensed IP and they didn't have to work too hard on characters and plot.
But I digress.
[1] https://www.washingtonpost.com/national/rise-of-the-machines...
That really varies widely, depending on how much of which kind of cannabis you use, how you use it, and the individual that uses it.
It's possible to have a very stressful experience if one takes too much or uses cannabis that's too strong. Some people can have panic attacks, effectively "bad trips", or even psychotic breakdowns (if they're prone to schizophrenia.. and you might never really know if you are until you have one).
Many people do in fact get stress relief from using cannabis, but that effect is by no means guaranteed. You might wind up stressing out, and even freaking out, instead.
Hopefully, when people use cannabis at work, they'll be doing so in moderation, but that's not guaranteed either -- some people do all sorts of irresponsible or ill-advised things.
Is it wrong to smoke weed while "on the clock" in your panties on the couch? Perhaps if it compromises the deliverable but if the employee is productive, efficient, and timely - should it matter if they are st0ned or not?